Erin Brockovich, Article Review Example

In the contemporary world of technological advancement and information-driven development, information is a key to awareness and timely decision-making. While in some fields of human life awareness and timeliness are the matter of gaining competitive advantage, in the case of healthcare, these aspects are crucial for the appropriate treatment and saving lives. The aim of this paper is to analyze the given article on data processing in healthcare in the context of the movie “Erin Brockovich.”

Both in the article and movie, the theme of health-related knowledge is outlined. In the case of the movie, the company is showed to hide the information on how chromium causes cancer in various inhabitants of the city. This is achieved by employing doctors who would not make systematic evaluations of the causes and would treat each case individually outside the context. In this regard, information was irrelevant on an individual basis, while it was demonstrating the actual hazards when analyzed systematically.

Consequently, the relation between the article and the movie is that it argues for the necessity of treating healthcare analytics systematically and organized. In this regard, just as in the case demonstrated in the movie, for the data to be an asset in decision-making it has to be timely and systematically analyzed and given to the decision-makers. In other words, the presence of separated and un-categorized data like information about individual cases without context and link is of little relevance since it cannot be processed systematically and gained at request.

Moreover, it is argued in the article that there is a missing link between the analytical team asking for the existing data and the data team inquiring which data is needed. The primary problem with such approach is a lack of systematic treatment of data, its collection, and consequent analysis. The centralized storage of data is argued to be the most functional solution of this problem. It would also provide consistency of data with which various stakeholders are working and would avoid misinterpretation of facts as in the movie.

In this regard, the primary reason why the company managed to hide the information of cancerogenic substance was due to the lack of systematic data collection, analysis and access to it. In other words, the company made sure that the individual cases remained individual; the medical information was controlled by their own doctors and was not within the records of the local hospitals. Consequently without links to separate segments of data, its systematic processing was impossible, and the common cause of the illnesses could be found. This is a very good example of how sporadic information outside the context and without a due systematization is just a totality of raw data. Thus, the primary relevance of data is in its timely availability for various stakeholders.

From the perspective of using the information, the necessity of its categorization and centralization of its storage are crucial for its accuracy and timely availability. In this regard, in the movie the company managed to hide its responsibility because the information was hidden from the public and stored in company’s headquarters. In this regard, for the information to be used properly, a centralized storage provides an opportunity for the free access to the information and its truthfulness.

Having come to the common ground of accuracy of information, the further stage of analysis is possible contributing to a more profound knowledge and consequent problem-resolution. From the healthcare perspective, having accurate and timely information gives an opportunity for making more accurate and timely diagnosis and treatment. Moreover, the centralization and systematization of healthcare data is particularly crucial in the environment where the amount of information is overwhelming, and relevance is situational.

Reference

Plummer, E. (2011). In Pursuit of Analytics: Best Practices for Healthcare Data Integration.

ASHIMA Convention. Retrieved from http://bok.ahima.org/doc?oid=105435#. VeBLLPl_Oko.